NeuroImage
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Review Historical Article
Future trends in Neuroimaging: Neural processes as expressed within real-life contexts.
Human neuroscience research has changed dramatically with the proliferation and refinement of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technologies. The early years of the technique were largely devoted to methods development and validation, and to the coarse-grained mapping of functional topographies. This paper will cover three emerging trends that we believe will be central to fMRI research in the coming decade. ⋯ In the last section, we highlight the trend towards more ecologically valid fMRI experiments, which engage neural circuits in real life conditions. We note that many of our cognitive faculties emerge from interpersonal interactions, and that a complete understanding of the cognitive processes within a single individual's brain cannot be achieved without understanding the interactions among individuals. Looking forward to the future of human fMRI, we conclude that the major constraint on new discoveries will not be related to the spatiotemporal resolution of the BOLD signal, which is constantly improving, but rather to the precision of our hypotheses and the creativity of our methods for testing them.
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The goal of this review is to describe, from a personal perspective, the development and emergence of the resting state fMRI. In particular, various concepts derived from the resting state data are discussed in detail, including connectivity, amplitude of the fluctuations, analysis techniques, and use in clinical populations. We also briefly summarize our efforts in creating an open data sharing platform as well as both a journal and a conference dedicated to brain connectivity. All three projects are aimed at significantly increasing the impact of resting state fMRI developments and enabling large, collaborative science projects.
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Review Historical Article
The future of acquisition speed, coverage, sensitivity, and resolution.
Two decades of technology development has continually improved the image quality, spatial-temporal resolution, and sensitivity of the fMRI acquisition. In this article, I assess our current acquisition needs, briefly examine the technological breakthroughs that have benefited fMRI in the past, and look at some promising technologies that are currently under development to try to envision what the fMRI acquisition protocol of the future might look like.
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Review Historical Article
The intravascular susceptibility effect and the underlying physiology of fMRI.
In this article, I will first give a brief account of my work at MGH on characterizing the intravascular susceptibility effect. Then I will describe studies into the underlying physiology of BOLD-fMRI which has become of interest to my group in the following decade. I will touch issues such as signal source of BOLD fMRI, capillary recruitment, the elusive initial dip and others.
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Review Historical Article
The future of susceptibility contrast for assessment of anatomy and function.
The magnetic properties of tissues affect MR images and differences in magnetic susceptibility can be utilized to provide impressive image contrast. Specifically, phase images acquired with gradient echo MRI provide unique and superb contrast which reflects variations in the underlying tissue composition. ⋯ Still, this major tissue contrast mechanism is largely unexplored in magnetic resonance imaging because non-conventional reconstruction and dipole deconvolution are required to quantitatively map tissue susceptibility properly. This short review summarizes the current state of susceptibility contrast and susceptibility mapping and aims to identify future directions.